


A Hunger

by conceptstage



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Graphic description of blood drinking, Tumblr Prompt, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 23:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16670584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Caleb's hungry and mostly dead but honestly, this isn't even the fourth worst thing that ever happened to him.





	A Hunger

Beau grunted and whacked Caleb hard against the face with her staff. “Stay down, Asshole!” she hissed, holding out her arm to hold Jester back behind her.

“I can heal him,” Jester whispered through tears. “Let me go, I can fix him.”

Beau didn’t move and when Caleb looked up at her with angry red eyes and growled with two giant fangs peeking out from behind his upper lip. Beau brought her staff down hard with both hands onto his back to knock him back down on his face.

“Stop hitting him!” Nott screamed, fighting against Yasha’s hold around her. 

Beau sat on his back and grabbed his arms, pulling them back behind his body and tying them together at the elbow with her belt to keep him from using them. Caleb growled and bucked under her, trying to wiggle free. “I don’t want to hurt you!” Beau screamed, grabbing the back of his head and smashing his face against the pavement. “Okay, that’s kind of a lie, that was fun. I don’t want to hurt you too badly!”

Caleb finally stopped moving but he was breathing deeply, glaring at her from the side of his eye. “I’m so hungry,” he said, sounding more pathetic than rageful. “ _ Bitte, _ I need… I don’t know, I need to eat.” His voice was lisped trying to talk around his fangs and Beau had to remind herself that now was not the time to laugh at it. There would be time for that later when Caleb was better. “ _ Ich habe Hunger _ .”

“Caleb,” she said quietly. “How did this happen?”

He just squeezed his eyes closed against the pain and turned away from her, pressing his nose against the pavement. “ _ Bitte _ …  _ Bitte _ , _ ich brauche _ …”

“We need blood,” she said, standing up. Caleb tried to push himself into a sitting position but Beau put her foot against his back and pressed him back down. “Don’t move. Don’t give me an excuse to smash your face again, man.”

He growled again but laid back down the pavement. “ _ Bitte _ …  _ Blut _ ,  _ bitte _ .”

“I’m gonna get you blood, dude. Cool it, have some fucking patience.”

He groaned. “You’re the last person who should be talking to me about patience, Beauregard.”

“Hey, no sass from you. You tried to kill me not two minutes ago, so you don’t get to say shit.” She scratched nervously at her undercut and looked around them at the empty city alleyway around them. There were no people in the street that she could she and certainly no one she’d been willing to let Caleb kill for food. “How much do you need?” she asked suddenly. “Like, do you need to drain someone to feel full? Do you just need a pint or two?”

“Not all,” he mumbled. “Just a little.  _ Nur ein bisschen _ . A pint sounds good.”

She breathed heavily in through her nose and then nodded with determined eyes. “Okay. Alright, okay. I’m gonna do this. If you kill me, I will haunt you for the rest of your garbage life.” Beau straddled his back and held him down on the ground with her left arm to keep him from moving.

Fjord ran forward from where he’d been holding Jester back and grabbed Beau by the shoulder. “Wait! Beau, what the fuck are you doing? Caleb-”

Beau shook his hand away and glared at him. “Do I have to have Jester hold _ you _ back now? Because based on the look on her face I think she’d do it without hesitation.”

They both looked back at the little blue tiefling whose face showed a range of heartbreaking emotions. She nodded. “Fjord… Let Beau do what she’s gonna do. Please.”

“Save Caleb,” Nott called. She had stopped fighting against Yasha’s hold. “Please, he needs us!”

Fjord swallowed a lump in his throat but nodded and stepped away. Beau waited until he was back with the others and then moved her right arm around the front of Caleb’s face. “I’ll be fine. This is just like donating blood to a medical center, I used to do that all the time.” The second she got close enough to his mouth, Caleb latched onto her forearm. She winced at the feeling of the initial pinch as his teeth pierced her skin but the pain wasn’t overwhelming by any means. He seemed under control now but uncomfortable and she reached over to pull out the knot holding his arms behind his back. The second his arms were free, he pushed himself up to his knees and held onto her arm with both hands, angling it differently in his teeth to keep some of the blood from dribbling down his chin. 

Yasha slowly lowered Nott down to the ground and she instantly ran over to Caleb, reaching up to put a hand on his back. He didn’t even notice her. “I’m here,” Nott whispered even though her boy didn’t react. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave.”

“Nott,” Beau mumbled. She was trying to keep quiet to keep from interrupting him but he didn’t even seem to realize she was there. As far as he seemed to be concerned she could be a dismembered arm as long as there was fresh blood in her veins. “What happened? How did this… how did he end up this way? He was fine this morning.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “We left the inn together but then he wandered off around lunch. Okay, honestly,  _ I _ wandered off around lunch, I went looking for meat. I left him alone. I let this happen to him.”

“Nott, whatever happened it wasn’t your fault. Most likely, whoever did this would have either turned or killed you even if you had been there,” Fjord said, moving down to sit on the ground with his legs crossed in front of him. Jester moved down to sit next to him and buried her face in his arm to hide her sadness. Caduceus walked over to sit next to Beau, ready to heal her puncture marks the second Caleb finished. Only Yasha stayed standing, moving to the front of the alley to block the view from the outside in case people passed by.

Beau felt herself start to feel a little light headed and she smacked his shoulder. “Alright, alright. That’s enough, you fucker.”

He jumped like he was waking from a nap and snapped his eyes open and over to her face. He pulled back and Beau gagged at the weird feeling of teeth pulling out of her skin. Blood started slowly leaking down the side of her arm and Caduceus reached over to heal the holes closed.

Caleb still had a dazed look on his face but he shook out of it when Nott started rubbing her claws gently up and down his spine. “Hey. Feeling better?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I can think clearly now. What  _ the fuck _ is going on?”

Beau huffed and ran a hand over the smooth skin of her arm. “That’s my goddamn question too! What the fuck happened after Nott left you alone, man?”

“Did I… Did I hurt anybody?”

Beau sighed like this was the greatest inconvenience of her life. “Dude, you tried to kill me. You were starving when you found us, we were all headed back to the inn,” she pointed to the building behind them. “You jumped out of the alley and jumped on my back.”

“Yes, but you’re alive, you’re fine now. Did I  _ kill _ anybody? Anybody else?”

“No, I was getting to that, if you’d let me fucking finish a thought. You were starving, I don’t think you’d had any blood since you were turned. I’m not an expert on this shit or anything, obviously, but I’ve read enough shit on monsters to know that vamps usually blend into society pretty well. The only problems come when they don’t eat.”

Caleb looked down at his blood covered hands and was horrified when he found himself tempted to lick the blood off his fingers. “I’m a monster…” he mumbled. “I mean, I was always a monster but now there’s no denying it.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that!” Nott exclaimed. “Caleb, you perfect. Human you or vampire you, you are the best and I love you.”

Caleb reached over to gently pat her head. “Thank you, _ spatz, _ ” he whispered.

Jester surged forward, having enough waiting around, and gripped his hands, unconcerned by Beau’s blood all over her hands. “Caleb, there must be some way to change you back. There’s must be and I will not rest until we find it.”

“That is very kind of you, Jester, truly. But I think this is a permanent development.” He ran his hand over his pants to wipe off the blood and then cleared his throat. “Could I speak to Beauregard alone for a moment.”

Fjord frowned. “Honestly, Caleb, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be alone with anyone right now.”

“I’m full, Fjord. The hunger is sated, at least for now. I don’t know how often it will return, that's part of why I want to speak to Beau. I won’t hurt her, she may be my only chance of making it through this with what’s left of my humanity. Please.”

Beau grunted as she got to her feet and waved everyone away. “Go find something to eat. I’ll catch up in fifteen minutes. I’ll be fine.”

Jester paused on her way out of the alley to kiss Caleb’s cheek and then she followed Yasha and Caduceus to the front of the building. Nott hung back, holding Caleb’s hand and Fjord was looking between Beau and Caleb with a disapproving frown on his face. “I still don’t like this.”

“Fjord, Nott,” Beau said. “Go.”

Nott let her hand slide out of Caleb’s and then she and Fjord left reluctantly. “If you're not back in five minutes,” Fjord said. “I’m coming back.”

Caleb nodded even though it wasn’t really directed at him. “This shouldn’t take that long.”

Beau waited a few seconds until she was sure they were both gone, then she helped Caleb to his feet and watched him with her arms crossed over her chest. “Alright. What’s going on? What happened, who did this to you? I’m going to rip that fanged piece of shit a new asshole and then I’m gonna kill him.”

Caleb huffed a short laugh. “That is quite a visual, thank you for that.” He paused and his smile fell quickly. “I don’t remember. I’d been separated from Nott for about an hour and then my memory goes black. It doesn’t return until the moment I pulled my teeth out of you.”

“Egh, don’t say it like that.”

“How am I supposed to say it?”

“Let’s just come up with a code word for it, or some shit. You were drinking apple juice. Your next memory was of drinking apple juice.”

“Fine, fine. I don’t remember anything until I finished drinking apple juice a few minutes ago. That just feels so weird to say.”

“And saying ‘Oh, I pulled my fucking fangs out of your body’ isn’t weird?”

He threw up his hands. “Whatever. The reason I wanted to talk to you alone is because I think I’m going to need to… drink apple juice again. I know that you did it tonight because you were desperate but I won’t do it again without your permission.”

“Of course you can drink my blood again, you moron. You had my permission this time too.”

“Hey, if I have to call it apple juice, so do you!”

“Fuck, you can drink apple juice again, just let me know whenever you need it. But I’m with Jester, we should try to find a way to turn you back.”

“Beau, I didn’t want to tell her but… there is no cure. I’m technically undead now. I can’t just become not partially dead anymore. It doesn’t work that way.” 

She sighed and put her hands on her hips as she started pacing in front of him. “I’m going to look anyway. I mean, knowing more about this can only be a good thing, right, even if there’s no cure?”

“You’d think.”

She paused when there was movement in the corner of her eyes and she saw Fjord step into view in the front of the alley. He paused there when he saw that they were fine and just leaned against the wall, watching them. “We should go in,” she said. “We’re not going to figure this out tonight, we should get a full night’s rest and then we’ll hit the books in the morning.” Fjord opened his mouth to call down to them but she stopped him with a wave. “We’re coming, Fjord!” She put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder and started leading him out of the alley, squeezing it gently. “Don’t worry, Man. We’re gonna figure this shit out. I promise.”

“Beauregard,” he whispered before they got too close to the mouth of the alley. “Don’t let me hurt anyone in the group.”

“I won’t.”

“Even if you have to kill me.”

Beau sighed and rubbed her eyes, feeling tired and drained from the sudden loss of blood and the events of the night. “Yeah,” she said. “I swear.”


End file.
